Lessons

Lesson Info

Create a Timeline to Launch & Grow Your Online Store

So I want to go back to that other question about planning out you're in this case I planned out launches so I don't plan out email calendars but my lunch schedule dictates my email calendar so that's going to be our next action step so first of all, if you haven't actually been following along like I asked you to I want you to make this commitment right now that you were going to launch your new online store in one week that is very, very doable you could do it today if you want it it's really that doable but you're going to do it in the next week no more come on around no more wasting time we're just going to do it and again what I mean by launch is choose your platform, install a template, set up your domain, move forty eight products over that's it as your email capture and then change all your links that is what I mean by launch very doable block out an afternoon on your calendar and get it done and then remember post that linked are create to make hashtag I want to see that you'r...

e actually doing it and here's really the key with this don't get bogged down in tiny details everyone in our studio audience is laughing right now you guys are all guilty of this huh? All right here's the deal how many of you are perfectionists okay we're gonna do some perfection of them recovery right here all right so let me let me give it to you straight perfectionists don't win they don't rule the world young rules the world the people who get stuff done people who launch if you ever anything myself going it's people who ship it's never going to be perfect and that's okay it's fine in fact so here's the thing you're saying we'll always be a work in progress so you guys saw a couple screen captures for my online before I change my home page while I was writing this class this is how much of a work in progress my site is oh, you know I think would be better than just my tagline let's tell people that a new collection is coming in at an email opt in right there on page this is the beauty of the internet it doesn't have to be perfect because you can change it tomorrow and you can change it the next day you can change it the next day sara and I were talking during the break and she was saying what kind of all the times I've changed my site think this temple it happened after I got back from india and I was super jet lag enough it like five when I was like let's change my template it's all fine and the beauty of this was all really easy but the most important thing is that through all of these changes I started with a storage shopped at megan ahmed dot com believe in two thousand eleven on big cartel so through all of those changes, I have been capturing email addresses I have been making sales that have been connecting with my customers and I've been growing my business it wasn't perfect when I launched it's not perfect now there's plenty of things I could do differently, but if I had waited to get to this point, I would've lost on a lot of time a lot of money we've lost out on a lot, so we want to make those little incremental steps just get it launched that's your goal all right and it's fine wholesale customers order through this website or do you have a different system for them? They do not. So ok, so it's a great question, so my wholesale customers tend to be a little bit older on dh, so we're a little more old school and I'm a little more old school weirdly about my wholesale business, so they email me what they want now what I noticed is that if you go to my site, you'll see that I'm very specific product names I have like the amy necklace, the audrey necklace and my whole business we deal with the skews right so it's like sl bela injury or whatever? And so I thought, ok, you know, my wholesale customers are never going to use those. They send me e mails all the time. I need the audrey necklace. I need this. I need that so they're looking at my site, but because of my billing system, because everyone's on that thirty I don't have the mortar, they just sent me an email now, that's not to say that you can't do it, so shopify does have some plug ins in their store that people can log in as a wholesale buyer and get your wholesale price. The downside with them is that as far as I can tell, they are based on a percentage off rather than a set wholesale in a set retail price, and that makes it a little messy for me, so I have not done it so it's an option if haven't been when it's necessary for me, but it's certainly doable. All right, so we've got our side up now I want to talk about creating your product line move because that's kind of the big next step, right? We've moved a few products over, but ultimately the idea is that we're getting off of that sea, and we've got all of our products or all of our products that we love in our news site. So what we're going to dio is again we're going to think about this as our building anticipation and launch so we're gonna commit to moving ford eight products if you've got a lot of products I would say you could go as high as like twelve at a time and to your online store and we're gonna think about doing it and thematic batches this is again how we make it an event it could be ok I'm moving hearings or I'm moving this group of my gemstone collection and we talked about that with martha or broad ones doing you know, moving a bunch of one of a kind in so think about how you khun given this cohesive feel and then depending on your audience and how fast you want to move and how faster not you want to fatigue your list we're going to release these say everyone to four weeks so depending on your schedule there's a lot of wiggle room here you kind of see what works for you and for every product line move you're going to send an anticipation email to your list three to five days beforehand hey guys these new products are coming for these products are coming you have to use the work knew because they're not new but you don't have to say they've been in my shop and I'm moving them over right guess what guys these products are coming to my new store and then on really stay, we're going to send another email to our list that says, boom, they're here go by it's, not magic, and that you're not going to convert every single person on your left every time you do this, but on those days, you're going to get people who are interested in buying to your store and that's the most important thing. So what I want to do now as I want a brainstorm and start to make your list of product groupings to move to your online store, we're going to create a target release date for each move. So this is instead of planning out our email calendar, we're planning out our launch calendar, and if you guys went in and download that workbook that you can get, I've got this set up there in the workbook for you. So you're going to think about your product grouping theme what products you're specifically going to move, and then we're going to set a target release date for those. So we're going to actually go ahead and schedule this out, and this is one of those that, you know, you won't have to take an afternoon on this one and brainstorm product groupings, right, pull things together look at your image is figure out what makes sense to move, oh. But the nice thing is that of course we've already launched so now we're just thinking about what we launch next what we launch next what we launch next then the other thing that happens when we're thinking about our online store is you'll notice that nowhere in this process so far have we talked about all of these other pages because I didn't want youto worry about them until now in fact, if you bought this class and you haven't done everything up to this point hit the pause button right now and go to all of that other stuff and then come back and we're going to talk about these pages because what I see is this is where decision paralysis happens I can't launch because I don't have this on I don't have that and I don't have this eventually you need it but I want you and all of secret most of it's not as important as you think yes about pages are awesome and you want a good one but if you look at your analytics there's a lot of people were going to buy for me without ever having been to your about paige especially if you interacted with him on social media they joined your email list you're built up that personal report they don't have to go to your about page because they feel like they know you already so it's okay if you launch without it you might have to turn on the terms and privacy policy, but guess what? All of those platforms auto generated turn it on and you can decide later if you want to change it. Same thing with, you know, returns retailer list presser media mentions you could do all these things later, so this is one where I like to think of ok, these are pages that we need, but I don't have to do them right away, so we're gonna cause your video do our action step for did just make a list of the pages that you need to add and give yourself a deadline so once a week I'm going to tackle one of these pages gonna do my contact form this week. Next week, I'm gonna write my about paige it's, okay? If it's not great, I can always rewrite it later, right? It's fine, then I'm going to my return policies. What is going to make that list tell again? Don't overthink this, they they're important, but they're not that important. The most important thing is that we're getting our site launched. We're capturing email, we're interacting with our customers now again because I know how decision paralysis works and I know what goes through everybody's mind you're also like megan, I didn't launch yet because this and this and this and this also things that aren't that important I promise you that if you put up your site pick a template, add forty eight products and add your mailing list often you are so much further ahead then everybody who's still telling me well I can't launch because I didn't add gift cards yet she only gift cards I fell on my shop like two a year people buy stuff they want the stuff man so here are some other things that at some point you might want to think about do you want to add other payment options there's going to be default ones when you sign up for your platform just turn on the ones that are easy and move on you might want other ones later maybe you need a different kind of credit card processing or whatever later you might want to add some shipping profiles to make your life a little easier that's mine you could do it manually at the beginning. Okay, maybe later you'll have gift cards we talked about that suggested products feature so you know, depending on the template you use they might auto generate like oh people who bought this also like or you might also like this you might decide that you want to go in and and add a plug and that does it manually that's fine, but you have to do that to launch this evening with social share buttons they're really nice to have, but they're not essential. So all of these things and anything else that's spinning through your head. But meghan, I can't launch because we're going to turn those into your rainy day tasks for your website, so my side is launched. I've got an extra afternoon. I don't know what that looks like, but you might suddenly find one. Business is a little slow. You don't feel like working in your studio. Today. We go to our rainy day task list, and we check something off, but none of that has kept us from launching our site. We've gotten everything up and running first.